Every year, watershed residents and organizations from across the region contact us to ask how they can participate in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service and improve our watershed. This year, this support was especially helpful as we were faced with the challenge of removing hundreds of tires dumped in Tacony Creek Park at two locations. 

On the morning of Martin Luther King Day on January 16, at Tacony Creek Park’s Whitaker Avenue gateway, over 70 volunteers removed trash, litter, discarded furniture, and tires. 

Some volunteers removed trash from under the Whitaker Ave Bridge and along the trail towards Rorer Avenue, while others focused on removing trash surrounding the guardrails, trees, and benches at the Gateway.

A few volunteers joined our truck brigade, removing tires from the park below the Cheltenham Gateway, placing them in three pickup trucks and transporting them to the container at the Whitaker underpass. One volunteer hero brought his own pick up truck! Some volunteers assisted in organizing tires inside the container to ensure that we could fit as many as possible. View photos from the cleanup here.

Thank you to WHYY for joining us to cover this event and hear from TTF and volunteers about their thoughts on the roots of dumping and trash, and how these issues connect to Doctor King’s commitment to racial and economic equality.

The success of this cleanup effort was the result of partnership! Without the assistance of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and Water Department, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, and United By Blue, we would not have been able to attract as many volunteers and marshall as many resources as we did. Special thanks to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, who provided the containers and truck transportation to be able to not only remove these tires, but take them to a recycler as well!

To all the volunteers, thank you for coming out to help improve our watershed! We hope to see the same faces again soon. Look out for future weekly and monthly Creek Care Day information here.